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The concept of earning interest on money in the bank is so deeply ingrained into economic life that few people even know that the opposite can happen too: Banks can take a percentage of cash from your account in the form of negative interest rates, under certain conditions. Normally, this doesn't happen. Banks want your cash, and pay you interest on it, because the more deposits they have, the more they can lend it to others who pay them even more on their investments. But interest rates in Europe are so close to zero — and economic activity is so...

The Insured Retirement Institute has concluded, baby boomers "face a dangerous combination of being under-saved and long-lived." The IRI found four in 10 baby boomers have nothing saved for retirement, and 37% of those who do have savings have less than $100,000 put away. This spells trouble for the average 65-year old male and female who have a 50% chance of living until at least 87 and 89, respectively. The IRI says someone who retires at the age of 65 today will need more than $1 million for retirement while someone who waits until age 70 to retire will need...

Aesop would have had a straightforward explanation for why some people just can’t manage to save up for retirement: Some people are born ants—industrious and in possession of great willpower—while others are grasshoppers, living only for today. Millennia later, sorting workers into personality-specific boxes is still the preferred way of thinking about how to get people to put more money into savings. An otherwise thoughtful survey of over 1,000 individuals and interviews with 50 people by the MetLife Mature Markets Institute identifies no fewer than 10 different variations on the grasshopper: There are “Snoozers,” “Oversleepers,” “Stewers,” “Brewers.” And then there...

Only 63 percent of Americans have saved any money for retirement within the past year, according to a Federal Reserve survey released Wednesday.The survey of 5,800 Americans, conducted last fall, found that 31 percent of Americans have no retirement savings or pension plans. And among adults older than 45, almost 25 percent of respondents didn't have retirement savings. Thirty-eight percent of respondents, meanwhile, said they don't plan on retiring and will "keep working as long as possible," USA Today reports.

Got $1 million in your 401(k)? Some savers might be surprised how feasible that savings goal is if they put their mind — and their money — to it. Of course, if you don’t have $1 million saved, you’re definitely not alone. Just 0.42 percent of all 401(k) participants in the Employee Benefit Research Institute’s database had $1 million or more in their account at the end of 2013. EBRI’s data covers 26.4 million savers. Similarly, just a tad more than 72,000 retirement savers, or 0.56 percent of the 13 million plan participants in its database, had $1 million or...

Statewide caps on government employee health insurance have saved Michigan public school districts a total of $1.3 billion since the 2010-11 school year, according to an analysis done by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. The caps were implemented by a 2011 law. Districts spent $1.91 billion on employee health insurance in 2010-11, the year before Gov. Rick Snyder signed the new law. It imposed either a “hard cap” on how much schools could spend on health insurance, or required employees to pay at least 20 percent of the premiums. The cost to school districts has dropped each year since,...

This could be the scariest chart in the world, from Deutsche Bank's Torsten Sløk. Nearly half of American households don't save any of their money. If it it isn't obvious, this has a broad range of implications. People who don't save won't have any buffer should the economy turn and they lose their jobs. Longer term, people who don't save won't have the capacity to retire. It's not good.

Brother, can you spare a nickel? For roughly half of American households they answer is "barely," according to the results of a new survey by Bankrate.com. About half reported they are setting aside no more than 5 percent of their income in savings. One in five said they're not even able to save a penny. The highest savings rates were reported by those in the middle of the income ladder; more than a third of households earnings between $50,000 - 75,000 said they're saving more than 10 percent of their incomes, a higher rate than those in the highest-income bracket....

You probably want to retire at some point. But before you can get there, you have to be able to answer a few questions.For example, how much money should you have already saved up if you want to retire by age 65?JPMorgan Asset Management's 2015 "Guide to Retirement" has a handy retirement savings checkpoint guide to help you with that one.To get a crude idea of how much you should have saved, find the age nearest to your age and then go across to the column with the salary nearest to your current salary. Then multiply the number you land...

No excerpt allowed from Bloomberg, column here.

As I have noted previously bond yields continue to go lower, and Investment News reports that it has some bond managers worried that it means that the country will suffer a bout of deflation this year, which mean that the economy, might be, could be, holy cow, a little weaker than expected. Wow. You donÂ’t say? Investment News reports that bond yields are a pretty accurate predictor of which way consumer prices will be going. And in this case the yields are saying consumer prices will be going down. ThatÂ’s good news for those of us who still buy things...

Akin Oyedele October 22, 2014"Gold gets dug out of the ground in Africa or someplace. Then we melt it down, dig another hole, bury it again and pay people to stand around guarding it. It has no utility. Anyone watching from Mars would be scratching their head." That's what Warren Buffett said back in 1998. Gold has long been considered a safe-haven investment. However, the price of gold has performed dismally in recent years. For those who don't trust the conventional financial markets, there are alternative more unorthodox ways to put away wealth. We put together a list of some...

Citing a paper released this week by the St. Louis Federal Reserve, Vice-President Joe Biden blamed American consumers for the sluggish economy. “The government is doing everything it can to try to stimulate the economy,” Biden contended. “The federal government is spending every dollar it can get its hands on. The Federal Reserve is manufacturing new dollars at an unprecedented pace. But consumers are just sitting on their cash.” “Hoarding cash makes no sense,” the Veep argued. “The dollar’s purchasing power is being diluted on a daily basis by government policies. Spending your dollars before they lose even more value...

More than a third of American adults have no retirement savings, including 14% of those 65 years of age or older, according to a new study released Monday. The low savings rate for people at or approaching retirement age is alarming, said Greg McBride, chief financial analyst for Bankrate.com, which conducted the survey. About a quarter -- 26% -- of those age 50 to 64 haven't started saving for retirement, the survey said; the figure was 33% of people who are 30- to 49-years-old. Overall, 36% of those 18 years or older have not started saving for retirement, according to...

One in five people who are near retirement age have zero money saved. Yes, you read that correctly. The sobering statistic was one of many released by the Federal Reserve on Thursday as part of its report on the economic well-being of U.S. households, which surveyed more than 4,100 people online last year between mid-September and early October. The study offered a stark reminder that as more Americans are made responsible for their own retirement, most are not saving nearly enough. Overall, 31 percent of people said they have zero money saved for retirement and do not have a pension....

Nearly Half Of Us Couldn't Live A Month On Our Savings Trae Bodge , RetailMeNot's The Real Deal Apr. 1, 2014, 5:56 PM April is Financial Literacy Month (and dreaded tax time), so let’s talk about your financial know-how. Are you financially prepared if you need to stop working for a few months due to a layoff or illness? Do you know how much money you have lying around? What about your kids? Are you setting them on a path to financial health? RetailMeNot recently polled more than 1,000 Americans and found that overall consumers are doing pretty well on...

We recently pointed out that starting to save early for retirement is extremely helpful, and also a useful chart showing how much you should have saved at different stages of your career to ensure a comfortable retirement. To show how these ideas work, we figured out how much money you would have to set aside monthly, starting at different ages, and under different rates of return, to end up with $1,000,000 in savings when you are ready to retire at 65. Here is how much you would need to save each month at a 6% annual rate of return, starting...

If you have a modest income, you've probably been asking yourself how you will ever be able to find the money to start saving. So here it is: Provided your income is low enough, the federal government will pay you to stash money away for your retirement — giving you as much as $1,000. The deal comes through what's known as the “saver's credit.” You can find it buried in the tax return you do each year, and if you use the free tax preparation software the government gives people with incomes below $58,000, locating the saver's credit will be...

President Barack Obama plans to ask Congress in early March, as part of his fiscal 2015 budget, to reduce some of the tax advantages for employer-sponsored retirement plans for higher-income earners, according to published reports. Plus, the president wants to limit the value of all tax deductions, defined contribution exclusions and IRA deductions to 28% of income — and include an overall cap on all retirement accounts, including pensions, that could bring in $1 billion a year in new tax revenue, according to a Pensions & Investments report. According to the report, the proposals are designed to direct more of...

(Reuters) - The savings of the European Union's 500 million citizens could be used to fund long-term investments to boost the economy and help plug the gap left by banks since the financial crisis, an EU document says. The EU is looking for ways to wean the 28-country bloc from its heavy reliance on bank financing and find other means of funding small companies, infrastructure projects and other investment. "The economic and financial crisis has impaired the ability of the financial sector to channel funds to the real economy, in particular long-term investment," said the document, seen by Reuters. The...